Last of Days
by fieldagent85
Summary: The Walker siblings try to comfort their mother on her first Valentine's Day alone, and recall the story of how their parents first met.


After hitting the snooze button for the third consecutive time, Kitty Walker decided she could postpone getting up no longer. She crawled out of bed, put on her slippers, and trudged out of her bedroom. As she neared the bathroom she saw, through tired, squinted eyes, that the door was closed and the light was on. She groaned and started pounding lightly on the door.

"Chill, I'll be out in a second!" Justin called.

His first morning back in town and he was already getting on his older sister's last nerves.

"Come on, Justin!"

"Go downstairs!"

Kitty shrugged and reluctantly headed to the downstairs bathroom. Once she had done whatever it was she needed to do, she started toward the kitchen. Upon entering the room, she stopped in her tracks when did not detect the familiar smell of frewly brewed Maxwell House wafting through the air. The kitchen was perfectly clean and untouched, causing Kitty to furrow her eyebrows in confusion. Justin walked up behind her, and they both stared aimlessly at the empty kitchen with awe.

"What the hell?" Justin muttered.

"I don't know," Kitty responded, blandly.

"Mom must not be up yet."

"I don't believe it," she said, skeptically. "Mom...not up yet?"

"I know, right? No comprende."

Kitty tilted her head up and began surveying the room as if she were a detective investigating a triple homicide.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Justin turned and stared at her blankly.

"What?"

"Sorry, sometimes I forget you're a moron," Kitty remarked.

"Hey!"

Kitty grabbed Justin by the arm and led him out of the kitchen.

"Let's go see what's keeping the warden."

Together, they ascended the stairs as quietly as possibly and tiptoed until they reached Nora's closed bedroom door. Justin pressed his ear against it and listened.

"Well?" Kitty probed.

"Nothing."

"Okay, that's it. I'm going in."

Justin grabbed her arm before she could twist the doorknob.

"Dude, what if it's a trap?"

Kitty shook her head.

"Under no circumstance would our mother mess around with her morning coffee. I know her. Something's up."

With that, Kitty slowly opened the door and, with Justin trailing close behind, entered the bedroom her parents once jointly shared.

"Mom?"

They found their mother still in bed, though hardly asleep. She was tucked under the covers, rolled in a fetal position, and looked as if she had been crying for hours. Both children were as shocked at the sight of her as she was at the sight of them in her doorway.

"Oh my God, Mom," Kitty whispered under her breath. "What's wrong?"

Kitty started to walk towards her, but again, Justin held her back and whispered, "Dad." Kitty nodded, as all the pieces fell neatly together.

"I'm fine," Nora said, weakly, sniffling.

Unconvinced, Kitty shook her head. "No, you're not." She walked over to the bed and crawled in beside her mother. "I know I've told you this before, but really, you don't have to be so strong all the time."

Justin stood motionless by the door for a moment, unsure of how to react. He wasn't very accustomed to seeing his mother in moments of weakness. Nora had always been especially cautious of letting her guard down around her youngest child, her baby. Taking note of how his sister responded to their mother's current state, Justin decided to follow in her footsteps. He sat down on the bed beside his mother, on the opposite side his sister had occupied. She dropped her head helplessly onto his shoulder and he put his arm around her instinctively. It occured to Justin, at the very moment, that she had no one to do that for her anymore. He couldn't imagine what it was like to live with someone for forty years only to have that person snatched from you without warning. He had never really stopped to consider his mother's new place in life or what it must feel like to be her. He had only thought of what it felt like to be fatherless, as he was. He had considered his father's infidelity as a betrayal to him, not so much his mother. He realized then that what his father had done had hurt his mother the most and whatever Justin himself was feeling was probably insignificant compared to the emotional burden she was carrying.

"It's okay, Mom," Justin whispered, encouragingly, not knowing what else to say.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Kitty asked.

Nora immediately shook her head.

"No, no, no. I told you, I'm fine. Go get ready for work."

"I've got time."

Nora stared at her daughter incredulously.

"You hit the snooze button twice this morning."

Kitty's jaw dropped, though she didn't know exactly why she was surprised. Nora Walker seemed to know everything about everyone at every possible moment in time.

"Okay, yes, that's true, but it doesn't matter. I can go in late. It's Valentine's Day."

Despite Kitty's efforts to be supportive, the mere mention of Valentine's Day caused her mother to unleash her tears once more. She covered her faces and turned into Justin's shoulder for solace.

"Come on, Mom, talk to us. You'll feel better," Justin said, having learned this from his experience at rehab.

Nora sat up, wiped away the residue of her tears with the back of her hand and took a deep breath.

"You know, this morning, when I woke up...I half expected to see your father beside me. And it's funny because I thought I had gotten over that. It happened for the first couple months, and then I...slowly got used to it, but this morning was different. He was so...so obviously not there."

"That's only natural, Mom. It's your first Valentine's Day without him," Kitty said.

"I was thinking about last Valentine's Day," Nora began. "He had already left for work when I woke up, but in his place beside me, he left this...huge bouquet of roses about his size."

Justin laughed.

"I remember, you showed it to all of us the next day. Twice."

Kitty was noticebly quiet, ruminating upon how she wished she had been there last year. Nora continued.

"I called him at the office as soon as I woke up, still in bed, and Tommy answered and told me he was in a meeting. Foolishly I believed him, despite it being highly unlikely that Tommy would be sitting at your father's desk answering his phone. Apparently they had some sort of phone tree worked out, because two minutes later, he showed up in the doorway like a white knight with even more candy and flowers. I went to get up, get out of bed, but he just shook his head and said 'Don't move. I've got you right where I want you,'" Nora recalled, sighing nostalgically.

Justin and Kitty concealed their disgusted facial expressions and snide comments and settled for smiling awkwardly. Meanwhile, outside the House of Walker, the three remaining Walker siblings stepped out of the eldest's car and began their ascent up the driveway. Sarah and Tommy had somehow miraculously anticipated the melancholy mood their mother would be in and had planned to surprise her by requesting her presence at Ojai Foods, the family business. They knew nothing pleased Nora Walker more than being needed and spending the day lending her children a hand at work was likely to take her mind of whatever thoughts would be plaguing her that day. And Kevin was just there to see the excitement on his mother's face when the invitation was extended. They entered the house through the back door without knocking as they always did, and like their siblings, became suspicious when they noticed no coffee had been made and the kitchen remained untouched. Suspiciously, they began searching the house and ultimately were led upstairs. They noticed the door to the master bedroom was slightly ajar and popped their heads in. Upon seeing both their missing siblings and their sainted matriarch, they entered the room fully.

"Oh, God," Nora moaned, mortified to be seen in this state by all five of her children.

"What is this, _Terms of Endearment_?" Sarah questioned sarcastically.

"Yeah, really, who's dying?" Kevin questioned.

"Not who's _dying_, Kevin," Kitty replied pointedly, giving him the death stare. "Who's _died_."

Sarah, Kevin, and Tommy stared silently for a moment, then the realization washed over all of them at once. Sarah and Kevin immediately walked over to the bed, Sarah sitting by Justin and Kevin sitting practically on top of Kitty. Tommy hesitated for a moment, not being the most emotional of the Walkers, then sat at the foot of the bed stiffly but sympathetically.

"Oh, please, don't fuss over me," Nora insisted. "I'm fine. I'm merely...adjusting."

"Mom, come on. You can't think for a second we're actually gonna believe that," Sarah answered.

"Yeah, and we know how big Valentine's Day always was for you and Dad," Kevin added. "This is more than just a readjustment. It's a re-assimilation."

"Oh, it wasn't _that_ big..." Nora shrugged.

"Please, Mom. You and Dad _met_ on Valentine's Day," Tommy chimed in, surprisingly.

Nora bowed her head and covered her face with her left hand. Each of the siblings glared at Tommy, who shrugged sheepishly.

"I can't believe it's been forty-one years since that day," Nora said wistfully.

The kids all exchanged glances, silently negogiating their next move. Instinctively, they each knew exactly what was being negotiated, and they all nodded.

"You know, it's strange," Kevin began, reluctantly, doing what he had to do. "I can't seem to remember that story." He looked at Kitty, who nodded slowly, indicating that in this case, they all had to take one for the team in order to get past this. "Could you refresh my memory?"

Nora looked up, astonished.

"Really?"

"Yeah!" Kevin replied with fake enthusiasm.

All five of the Walker siblings had heard the story of their parents' auspicious first meeting close to two hundred times each and could probably have recited it word for word if dared. That said, they knew that it gave their mother a ridiculous amount of pleasure to tell the story and so, against their better judgement, they asked her to tell it.

"Yeah, Mom," Sarah chimed in.

"Tell us," Kitty said.

"Yeah, I totally can't remember, like, half of it," Justin added.

"Right, how does it start again?" Tommy asked.

Nora laughed with delight. "How does it start? How does it _start_? I'll tell you how it starts. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away..."

"It was in Boston, Mom," Tommy said.

"Tommy!" Sarah hissed.

"Sorry. Keep going."

Nora hesitated.

"Are you sure you want to hear this again?"

They assured her that they absolutely did, whether or not it was true.

"Okay. Well. Once upon a time, in _Boston_, Tommy...I was a naive eighteen-year-old working girl with..." 

"No desire to be anything else," Kevin whispered.

"...no desire to be anything else," Nora continued, unaware. "My boyfriend at the time was a senior at Boston College, the youngest son of my father's business partner. For Valentine's Day, he was planning to take me to a roadhouse production of _Camelot_. However, when his grandmother died and he had to go to Arizona for the funeral, I was left all alone."

Justin sighed. "Dad told this story so much better."

"Justin!" Kitty hissed, as Sarah had moments earlier.

"Sorry."

"You're right," Nora said quietly. "Your father always told this story better than I did. I was never very good at story-telling."

"Sure, you are, Mom," Sarah insisted. "You're great at it."

"Oh, like the time I told you the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and ended it with Goldilocks marrying Prince Charming?"

"It was...creative. I was totally into it."

Nora leaned back and sunk deeper under the covers, more depressed than ever. It was then that they all began to think back to the last time their father had told them the infamous of story of the day he had first met their mother, the last time they had all been together before September 11th, 2001. Kitty had come home to Los Angeles for a week at the beginning of the previous summer, only a week before Nora Walker was somehow persuaded by a vindictive hairdresser to get the worst haircut of her life. The whole family was assembled at the house for a barbecue, spouses and all, to celebrate Kitty's brief homecoming. After the food had been served and little Paige had been put to bed upstairs, the remaining Walkers gathered in the living room to engage in their favorite activity- casual drinking. The wine had been poured generously and all were comfortably seated--Julia and Tommy on the loveseat, Sarah and Joe on the floor leaning against the chair Kitty was sitting in, Kevin and Justin laying on opposite sides of the couch, and William and Nora sharing the overstuffed recliner. The conversation was flowing freely until William realized that Julia, having recently married into the crazy Walker clan, had yet to hear the famed story of how said Walker clan came to pass. When William announced that he decided to tell the story, Julia appeared excited and giddy. Her excitement, however, was deflated by the practiced groans of her husband and his siblings. But, one look from their father and all audible signs of protest disappeared, much to their mother's amusement.

"Now, are you ready for this story, Julia? It'll change your life," William promised. All five of his children rolled their eyes. "Don't think I didn't see you rolling your eyes. You may all be adults, but I won't hesitate for a second to ground each and every one of you."

Nora giggled. "I imagine that holds a lot of weight with them, honey."

"That's right." William nodded confidently. "Now. For a period of time in the 1960s, I was living in Boston trying to put the law degree that I never wanted to good use. Anything to stay out of the family business, which was back in San Diego. I was clerking at the state supreme court in the city, which left very little time for socializing."

"What's he's trying to say is, he was alone on Valentine's Day," Nora chimed in.

William looked up at her incredulously, trying to hide his smile.

"Yes, I was alone on Valentine's Day, all right?" Nora grinned and nodded her head. "Okay. But I wasn't the only one alone on Valentine's Day. Miss Popular over here had been ditched by her boyfriend."

"I was not ditched! He had to go to his grandmother's funeral in Tucson!"

"Semantics, my dear," William replied. "Anyway. I had gotten myself nosebleed seats some makeshift roadhouse production of _Camelot_, meanwhile, because her boyfriend ditched her, Nora had one empty seat beside her, in the fifth row. So, I politely asked..."

"He insinuated himself into the seat next to me," Nora finished for him.

William shrugged. "Who could resist an empty seat next to a beautiful girl?"

Nora rolled her eyes. "He just wanted a better look at the stage."

"Well, that seat just so happened to come with thirty-six years of benefits, didn't it?"

Nora laughed. "Yes, it did." 

"Anyhow," he continued, "I somehow persuaded her to let me buy her a drink. And I've been buying her drinks for close to four decades now. And the way speed at which this woman can finish a bottle of wine, it's a wonder I haven't gone broke doing it."

Nora frowned and whacked his arm.

"Don't listen to him, Julia, he's incorrigible."

The remaining and present Walkers laughed nostalgically at the memory.

"See? Dad always rocked that story," Justin said. "Even if we did have to hear it a thousand times. A day."

Nora smiled, sadly. "I should get up, make breakfast."

"No, no, no," Kitty insisted. "I'll make breakfast. You stay in bed."

They all burst out laughing.

"Why don't you let me make breakfast, KitKat?" Sarah suggested.

"Hey!" Kitty complained, as they all shrugged.

Sarah enlisted the help of her siblings in the kitchen, while Nora was instructed to keep an eye on Kitty, ensure that she didn't set foot in the kitchen.

"This is so unfair." Kitty pouted.

Nora slid over to the other side of the bed, once occupied by her husband, and patted the now-emtpy side.

"Better get comfortable, kid, you're not going anywhere."

Kitty sighed, then got in under the covers.

"Feeling better?" She asked her mother.

"Well." Nora smiled. "Bed's not so empty anymore, is it?"


End file.
